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One pundit said Staples' brand awareness is key to success. "Overall, I am impressed by its move as it has brand awareness in small and intermediate sized companies and should be able to immediately capitalize on that brand awareness," said Charlie Burns, vice president, Saugatuck Technology.

Burns said today's SMB tech teams are undergoing several transformations, including a 'do it myself' to 'do it for me' transition. "Another is an attempt to raise their focus from managing assets to managing delivery of services to support business processes," explained Burns, adding that the transformations provide a growing market for services such as Staples'.

Such new IT services can be compelling for SMBs for several reasons, according to experts. The advantage of outsourcing services is that companies have a chance to partner with a provider that specializes in storage and data protection. "In this kind of scenario the client company specializes in whatever it is that it does best and leaves the specialty of providing storage services to someone who actually specializes in storage technology," said Karp.

But there are downsides that SMBs should know, noted the industry watcher. One is having to relinquish control over the tech environment. Another is trusting that data will be safe.

"Both of these concepts however will have to be adjusted as businesses come to realize that the decision of where IT services reside has to be based not on 'IT philosophy,' but rather on where such services can be most economically provided," said Karp.

"From where I sit, the bottom line is if it makes good business sense, and if the technology is reliable, it should make no difference what the physical location of the service provider happens to be," he said.

Adapted from Internetnews.com.

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